Initiative

Hello, dear friends and chess fans! From today onwards I'll be writing my own blog in Russian. Please follow my articles and kindly share opinions and feedback.

Today I would like to talk about a very important element of chess strategy, the initiative.

The initiative is a series of attacking moves, which force the opponent to defence. Initiative can be developed at any stage of the game - at the opening, middlegame or at the endgame. But you should take to account that after a series of attacking and threatening moves you'll get some sort of an advantage. It can be material or positional advantage. Strong players usually feel the moment, when they can overtake the initiative, and this sense is based on the skills and knowledges. Chess is a logical game, so we can treat the situations logically. I'll give an example. You have better developed pieces, and you know that this advantage is time-sensitive, so if you won't use it immediately, the opponent can neutralise your advantage. Therefore it's the best time for seizing the initiative.

Now let's look at the examples from practice. The first game is from Garry Kasparov's repertoire. I would recommend you to take a pay a closest attention to this aspect of his games. The sense of the initiative used to be one of the major advantages of the world champion over his peers.

The second position is from my own practice.